Dark Avenger

Dark Avenger was a pseudonym of a computer virus writer from Sofia, Bulgaria. He gained considerable popularity during the early 1990s, as some of his viruses spread not only nationwide but across Europe as well, even reaching the United States and Australia.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, personal computers in Bulgaria were relatively rare, with only the wealthiest citizens able to afford one. Nevertheless, Bulgaria had a blooming computer hardware industry, which specialised in providing large numbers of PCs for educational purposes. Thus, many schools and universities were provided with computers, and informatics was a commonly studied subject. This helped foster a certain attitude towards computers among the newest generation.

In April, 1988, Bulgaria's specialised magazine for computers, 'Компютър за Вас' (Computer for You), issued an article which explained in detail the nature of computer viruses and even methods for writing them. A few months after that, Bulgaria was "visited" by several foreign viruses, namely "Vienna", "Ping Pong" and "Cascade". The interest spawned by both the article and the viruses was huge, and soon, young Bulgarian programmers began to search for ways to devise their own viruses.

Soon, a wave of Bulgarian viruses erupted, started by the "Old Yankee" and "Vacsina" viruses. Dark Avenger made his first appearance in the spring of 1989.

Dark Avenger's first virus appeared in early 1989 and contained the string, "This program was written in the city of Sofia (C) 1988-89 Dark Avenger". Thus, this first virus is usually referred to as "Dark Avenger", eponymous to its author.

It was very infectious: if the virus was active in memory, opening or just copying an executable file was sufficient to infect it. Additionally, the virus also destroyed data, by overwriting a random sector of the disk at every 16th run of an infected program, progressively corrupting files and directories on the disk. Corrupted files contained the string, "Eddie lives... somewhere in time!"—possibly a reference to Iron Maiden's album Somewhere in Time. Due to its highly-infectious nature, the virus spread worldwide, reaching Western Europe, the USSR, the United States, and even East Asia. It even received moderate mention in the New York Times and Washington Post.

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